


The Dream Forest

by ariadnes_string



Series: Far From the Rhodope Mountains [1]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 1, Gen, Jewish Character, Magic, Pre-Series, Sadism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-01
Updated: 2015-03-01
Packaged: 2018-03-15 20:44:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3461390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariadnes_string/pseuds/ariadnes_string
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In his thirteenth year, Joseph Kavinsky dreamed of a forest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dream Forest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darkrosaleen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkrosaleen/gifts).



> For darkrosaleen's amazing prompt imagining a Jewish Kavinsky, _"not to make him the evil foil to good, Catholic Ronan, but to make them more alike, two queer, magical sons of immigrant fathers with more money than sense."_
> 
> Following on from that prompt, this story is slightly AU from _The Dream Thieves_. In the books, we see the ley lines and Cabeswater through the lens of Ronan’s Irish heritage and Gansey’s Welsh obsessions. This story explores what their power would look like through the lens of a different culture: the mystical traditions of Eastern European Jews.
> 
> Thanks to isis for the very helpful beta!

In his thirteenth year, Joseph Kavinsky dreamed of a forest.

He was surprised by the dream, since forests were not part of his waking life. Until he was seven, they had lived in a third-floor walk-up in Queens, surrounded on all sides by takeout restaurants and discount stores. One lonely tree grew in the cinder-block playground. The gated community in New Jersey where they now lived had more greenery, but of the tightly controlled, low-lying sort. 

But the dream forest was wild. In it, Joseph was certain he was back in Bulgaria, though how he knew that he wasn’t sure. They had left when he was eighteen months old, and even then, they’d lived in the concrete wastelands of Sofia. How could he know what a Bulgarian forest would look like? Yet, in the dream, he did.

In the dream forest, ferns carpeted the ground, and thick trees nearly blocked out the sky, their trunks furred with moss. The place smelled like damp earth, mixed with something sharp and spicy. It felt stuffed with life, pulsing with it—so different than the huge, sterile house where his body lay sleeping, with its blank walls and nearly empty rooms. 

The dream forest was full of sound, a kind of guttural whispering that refused to resolve itself into words. Gradually, Joseph located its source: birds clustered thickly on the lower branches of the trees, black shapes jostling for position. 

Or were they birds? As Joseph watched them jitter and twitch, he decided they were too angular, too skeletal, for starlings or sparrows. Curious, he made a clucking, summoning noise, and, to his astonishment, one of the shapes flitted down to him.

It landed on the ground at his feet, and turned out not to be any kind of animal, but rather a collection of black lines held together in a precise pattern of curves and dashes. The thing was two dimensional, and yet it moved: it twirled on its apex, and then hopped up and down as if seeking his attention. Joseph crouched down to its level, and although it didn’t seem the kind of thing that one could touch, since it was a dream, he did so: the lines were cool and sharp. Not like metal, or wood, or feathers, or flesh. Not like anything he knew, and yet he knew it.

He blinked, and a few more line-creatures had joined the first. They milled about among the ferns, emitting that same guttural whispering, forming patterns that dissolved just as he was on the verge of recognizing them.

He wasn’t sure how long he stared before he realized what the things reminded him of: the letters in his father’s book. The book, with its cracked leather binding and warped pages, was encased in a stained, gaudy cover, studded with sequins and fake jewels. It was one of the few things they still had from Bulgaria. When Joseph, ever curious, had pulled it down from the top shelf of his parents’ closet, his mother had grabbed it away and slapped him. But not before he’d seen the lines of alien letters covering every page.

“The book was your great-grandfather’s,” Joseph’s father had told him once, on a rare occasion when he was drunk enough to be forthcoming, but not so drunk he’d stopped making sense. “He was a powerful _tzaddik_. People came from all over to ask him for miracles.”

“A _schtetl trickster_ , you mean,” Joseph’s mother had cut in. “Don’t fill the child’s head with such lies. We’re in America now, no more superstitions.”

They’d started fighting in earnest then, and the book was forgotten.

Now Joseph sat on the forest floor and watched the dream letters dance, black patterns against the vibrant green. The dances were names, he suddenly realized, and although he couldn’t pronounce the words they spelled, he could see the things they were naming—they shimmered in his mind’s eye, on the verge of becoming real. 

Were they offerings? He gathered up one of the patterns, and in his hands the letters became a small round cake. He tasted it: real, though dry, its spices as unfamiliar as the scents of the forest.

He spat it out. Cake was boring. What good were dream letters unless they could produce something he couldn’t get when he was awake? Images of all the things his parents forbade him crowded into his mind. Experimentally, he concentrated on his father’s vodka bottle: the special stuff he kept for important occasions. At Joseph’s feet, the letters rearranged themselves. When he seized the pattern, he found cool glass there instead. The alcohol sent a glow right through him, almost as strong as the thrill of power he felt at controlling the letter-creatures.

Elated, he constructed another image in his mind: his father’s most secret item, one Joseph had only glimpsed through a crack in the door, late at night. But this one the letters seemed unwilling to construct, or perhaps they were getting tired. They milled anxiously, their strange whispers growing shrill. When he reached out his hands to corral them, they shied away. 

But their resistance only increased Joseph’s pleasure. He darted out a hand and caught one. It squirmed in his hand like an insect, or a mouse. Joseph held it up as an example to the others. He twisted one of its two-dimensional limbs until it emitted a high-pitched squeal. The others froze, silent. Then, with a sullen rhythm quite unlike their previous playfulness, they formed the name of the thing in Joseph’s mind. With one final, warning wrench, Joseph released his captive, a deep satisfaction blooming in his chest. 

When he awoke, the heavy, black gun he’d made lay on his pillow.

**Author's Note:**

> Image of Bulgarian forest from [this page](http://bulforest-show.com/en/index.php/information/bulgarian-forests/)


End file.
